Nargis

Actress; her first leading role was Taqdeer, at fourteen (1929-1981)

Nargis was born Fatima Rashid, the daughter of Jaddanbai - a singer and one of the first women to produce and direct films in India - and had already worked as a child under the name Baby Rani. She was fourteen when Mehboob Khan cast her as Shyama in this film, her first leading part, and it was he who renamed her Nargis. Fourteen years later he gave her Radha in Mother India, the part Sardar Akhtar had played in Aurat, and it is the performance everything else about her is measured against. Between them came Andaz, Awaara and Shree 420 with Raj Kapoor. She married Sunil Dutt, who had pulled her out of a fire on the Mother India set, left acting for most of the next two decades, sat in the Rajya Sabha, and died in 1981 three days before her son's first film premiered.